Design of electronic circuits typically involves creating a functional prototype circuit. In order to create a functional prototype circuit, a layout of a printed circuit board (PCB) for the prototype is first created and then the PCB for the prototype circuit is fabricated and assembled with the electronic components for the prototype circuit. The prototype circuit on the PCB is tested and also modified where required, for example, to comply with FCC (Federal Communications Commission) regulations and other regulations in addition to correcting the functionalities of the electronic circuit. Small changes to the prototype circuit require fabricating of another PCB again and repetition of this process over and over. Sometimes this PCB fabrication process will be repeated numerous times before an acceptable prototype is attained, thus making the creation of a prototype circuit an extremely time-consuming and costly process.
Due to the time and cost involved with creating PCB boards, conventional so-called “breadboards” or conventional wire-wrap boards are frequently used to implement an initial prototype board of the electronic circuitry so that the functionalities of the electronic circuitry can be ascertained prior to embarking on the lengthy and costly process of creating a prototype on PCB. However, these conventional wire-wrap boards and breadboards also have significant disadvantages.
For example, conventional wire-wrap boards and breadboards are not inter-connectable, scalable, or customizable, and thus cannot be expanded in a convenient manner. Therefore, the entire prototype circuitry is commonly required to be placed on one wire-wrap board or on one breadboard. Even if only a part of the prototype circuitry is defective, the entire prototype circuitry must be implemented again on a new wire-wrap board or breadboard because the wire-wrap board or the breadboard is not modular.
Furthermore, conventional wire-wrap boards or breadboards are not designed for mounting surface-mount components and do not have pre-designed component footprints or bus interfaces thereon. Thus, the surface-mount components require adapters to be mounted on wire-wrap boards or breadboards, and extensive wiring or soldering is required for interconnecting the various components of the prototype electronic circuit on a wire-wrap board or breadboard. Therefore, it is very time-consuming and cumbersome to implement a prototype electronic circuit using a conventional wire-wrap board or breadboard.
In addition, conventional wire-wrap boards or breadboards are not capable of separating parts of the circuit for enhancement of Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) characteristics and Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) characteristics. It is considered a good design practice to group electronic components by both function and speed to avoid potential EMI and RFI problems. For example, most electronic devices have both analog and digital circuitry and use separate board areas for the digital and analog circuitry, since analog circuits are generally more sensitive to digital noise. When separating the analog and digital circuitry, the prototype circuit board is commonly designed with respective circuit traces of the digital and analog circuitry in their respective appropriate parts of the board, and the analog and digital power and ground planes are not overlapped with each other. However, since the conventional wire-wrap boards or breadboards are not modular and thus cannot be separated to several modules, it is difficult to implement such separation of circuitry to avoid potential EMI and RFI problems with the conventional wire-wrap boards or breadboards.
Therefore, there is need for a circuit board or an electronic circuit building block that is modular and capable of being connected to each other. There is also a need for an electronic circuit building block that is mechanically rigid when connected to another electronic circuit building block, so that the connected electronic circuit building blocks may be used in actual electronics products. There is also a need for an electronic circuit building block on which various types of electronic components such as surface-mount components and through-hole components may be mounted and interconnected in a convenient manner. There is also a need for an electronic circuit building block that can be used to separate certain parts of the prototype circuitry to avoid potential EMI and RFI problems. There is also a need for an electronic circuit building block that can be used to create electronic circuit prototypes in a short amount of time and with low cost.